It’s You, Not Me // 5 DNF of 2019

Normally I don’t share a lot of the books I DNF. To be fair, I don’t DNF a lot of books to begin with. Even so, I don’t think they really should just be passed by either. Some of them are well known sometimes and there is nothing wrong with sharing why a book didn’t work for me.

Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin

Release Date: November 20th 2018
Tags: Fantasy / Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire
Trigger Warnings: Incest / Hangings / Suicde
Place of DNF: P136 of P879 (Dutch edition)

This was one of those books that I kept holding in my hands in the store and that I kept putting back because I found the price too high for a curiousity. And I am glad I never ended up buying it but waited on my library to get the Dutch edition.

Fire & Blood is the first history book of a Targaryen History, the family of dragon keepers in the author’s long standing A Song of Ice and Fire and tv show A Game of Thrones. The book was boring and so incredibly dry. You’d think with dragons there would be some excitement but nope. And knowing I wasn’t even 25% in and that there was going to be another one of these in the coming years, it just wasn’t worth it.

Fablehaven by Brandon Mull

Release Date: June 7th 2006
Tags: Fantasy / Middle Grade / Mythical Creatures
Place of DNF: P125 of P269

I was actually really looking forward to reading this when I was picking up a bunch of Middle Grade but wow this does not stand the test of time. The writing wasn’t great and I didn’t care for the characters. For something thats about magic and fables, there wasn’t anything quite so magical to find. Lets not even talk about the complaints I have about the grandpa.

Lost Gods by Micah Yongo

Release Date: July 3rd 2018
Tags: Fantasy / African Inspired / African Legends / Assassins
Place of DNF: P100 of  P325

With this book I was actually approved for book 2 on Netgalley, but hadn’t seen that it was book 2 of a series. So I ended up getting the first book to be able to read it. I was actually excited because the covers are stunning and it being African inspired fantasy is great. But this book did not work for me and I had to DNF it.

One of the things that threw me from the start was reason. We got a deaf side character. He was good friends with our main character and there was use of sign language. Inclusive to a point. And yet it was just this character that got killed around page 30. It felt all kinds of icky to me and it took so much enjoyment out of the story because I was expecting the rep to be there throughout the book. It should have been there. Instead the character gets tossed away for the sake of our main characters revenge.

At that point my interest already wavered and I didn’t get it back. While I think the world is great I could never refind my interest in any of the characters or the plot. I think the writing was also a bit on the dry side. And at this point I realized it was better for me to stop reading this book. Better to say this isn’t for me and give the author another chance with a new series/book in the future.

The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter

Release Date: July 16th 2019
Tags: Fantasy / African Inspired / Swordfighting
Place of DNF: P246 of P579

Thank you to Little Brown Book Group/Orbit and Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway

Unpopular opinion time. If you have a title with dragon in it and mention dragons at the start, I am going to have high expectations. They were not met. I struggled so much to pick this up that at the end I decided to DNF at the midway point.

The world building is African inspired and it was the thing I liked the most about it. It could have been deepened out more around the magic but I think it was just about heading into that when I stopped reading.

Honestly I struggled reading this book because I was bored and had to resist skim reading. The start with the interactions of the mc’s family and friends were interesting. It gave more dynamic. However after that it slowly dwindled. The plot is that of revenge and it gives the MC a very one track mind. Up to the point where it was hard to see if he had any personality left. He was not that interesting to read about. If you do the revenge plot you need to make it appeal to readers and in this case it didn’t to me. There is a lot of fighting. Constantly actually. There are very few breaks in between for deepening out characters and when they are, they aren’t exploited as well as they should have been.

I also wasn’t quite feeling the couple in this. She deserves better than a twat who tells her he thinks about her as much as he does about sword fighting. He believed it himself too. Please, no you don’t. You only thought of her because you saw her. Rolling my eyes.

The use of the word savage was a lot. Now this is written by an African man and the word is aimed at the silver skinned ones. I want to trust that this is done well but I can’t help but feel this might trigger those that are very sensitive to the use of the word. But as a white person it isn’t entirely my place to judge either. I still wanted to mention it though for those that might be triggered by seeing the word on page.

The Babysitter’s Coven by Kate Williams

Release Date: September 17th 2019
Tags: Fantasy / Young Adult / Babysitting / Witches / Magic
Place of DNF: P79 of P232

Thank you to Delacorte Press for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.

I started reading this yesterday, got about 80 pages in, had to put it down and have no inclination whatsoever to pick this book back up. The idea I had of this book, it being promoted as buffy meets the babysitter’s club, are not even remotely met. The characterization in this first bit were cringey at best. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind that Esmee is more of an unlikeable mc and I think the basic tone was very young teen. But the constant chat speak while in Esmee’s head was too much. And I realized that I was just not the right person to read this book for review. That is why I am dnf-ing it.